If the US had a similar law, would Equifax have
done anything differently?
Under EU
General Data Protection Regulation large fines result from failure to
protect consumer data
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Sep 14, 2017
eSecurity
Planet: “The massive
Equifax breach that recently affected 143 million consumers would
have led to hugely significant fines if the European Union’s
General
Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which takes effect in May
2018, had already been in place. Under the new
rules, organizations that fail to protect sensitive data can
be fined up to 4 percent of annual global turnover, or 20
million Euros, whichever is greater. Since Equifax had $3.15 billion
in operating revenue in 2016, if the breach had taken place after the
GDPR had gone into effect, the company could have faced fines of up
to $126 million. What’s more, CipherCloud
founder and CEO Pravin Kothari told eSecurity Planet by
email, GDPR may well just be the beginning. “We expect GDPR to
serve as a model for similar regulations in the U.S. and around the
world, helping to protect individual privacy and thus minimize the
economic threat from future breaches,” he said…”
(Related). Cause and effect. The stock wasn’t
impacted because of the breach but only when the FTC gets ready to
investigate?
Equifax stock
plunged in value Thursday morning after the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) announced
an investigation into the security breach that exposed the
personal information of roughly 143 million people to hackers.
Shares of the embattled credit reporting company
dropped nearly 10 percent after the market opened Thursday morning,
sinking as low as $90.64 per share, about $8 lower than Wednesday’s
close. Equifax stock recovered slightly by 11 a.m., reaching $95 per
share.
FTC’s
announcement shook the market, given that the regulator typically
doesn't announce pending investigations.
(Related). Worth a listen.
How Equifax
Botched Its Data Breach Response
Wharton legal studies and business ethics
professor Peter
Conti-Brown, University of Michigan professor Erik Gordon and
William Black, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City,
recently appeared on the on the Knowledge@Wharton
show, which airs on SiriusXM channel 111, to discuss the breach,
the mistakes that were made in the credit giant’s response, and
what consumers can do to protect their credit going forward.
In terms of Equifax’s response, “this is an
absolute case study in doing virtually everything wrong,” Black
said.
“We should do something” or “We need to do
something” are not the same as “We will do something.”
Senators on the
Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on Thursday
criticized a subsidy program for phone and internet access that was
the subject of a recent watchdog report detailing
cases of fraud and abuse.
Sen. Ron
Johnson (R-Wis.), the panel’s chairman, said at a hearing that
there “probably”
needs to be a complete overhaul of the Federal Communications
Commission’s (FCC) Lifeline program, which offers low-income
households a monthly $9.25 subsidy for mobile and broadband internet
access.
“We
need to completely
rethink how we distribute that subsidy,” Johnson told reporters.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) put
out a report in June that found that $1.2 million in subsidies
went to fake or deceased people enrolled in the program. The
GAO could not verify the eligibility of 36 percent of the program’s
subscribers.
… “Why are we providing these companies with
this massive opportunity for fraud?” McCaskill said. [Maybe
because you delegated the creation and administration of the program
to the companies that get the money? Bob]
Win some, lose some.
In the filings, which were first reported on by
Politico,
Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District
of Columbia rejected a move by Google to challenge a warrant
demanding data from the company being stored overseas.
On Sept. 5, Howell decided
to hold the search giant in contempt for not turning over the
documents, and fined Google $10,000 a day until it complies.
Toward automating lawyers?
Twitch
co-founder Justin Kan unveils tech platform for law firms
Justin Kan,
co-founder of startups like Twitch.tv and Exec, is pulling the
curtains off his new tech platform for law firms, Legal Technology
Services. The first law firm to use LTS is Atrium,
co-founded by Augie Rakow and BeBe Chueh. Both are launching today
to bring a full-stacked technology-enabled law firm to startups.
What makes Atrium different from traditional law
firms, Kan told me, is its technology and upfront pricing. With most
law firms, it’s not always clear to the customer how much they’re
going to have to pay.
Atrium, which has 30 startup customers focused on
everything from cryptography to autonomous cars to medical tech,
offers two products. One is Atrium Counsel, which offers ongoing
services with fixed-rate, upfront pricing. It sort of functions as
preventative legal services, Kan told me. The other is Atrium
Financings, a fixed-fee service for startups to navigate the legal
intricacies of their financing rounds from start to finish.
… Behind the scenes, doing all the technical
work at Atrium, is LTS, co-founded by Kan and Chris Smoak. It
provides the technical backbone to Atrium with its suite of tools,
like document creation and e-signing, and project management
workflows.
“It
does everything except give advice,” Kan said.
I guess Facebook is no longer a ‘neutral’
utility that does not promote or sensor. These ‘categories’ were
automagically generated by collecting ‘like comments.’ Similar
groups might include “Trump haters,” “Hillary haters,” “Math
haters,” “lovers of Starbucks Moca-Frapa-whatsit.” Who gets to
choose which groups are inappropriate? Wouldn’t it be better in
the long run to try educating these people rather than driving them
underground?
Facebook allowed
advertisers to target advertisements toward anti-semitic individuals,
according to ProPublica.
The social media
giant has taken down categories that advertisers could gear their ads
towards like “Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History
of ‘why jews ruin the world,’ ” after ProPublica reached
out them.
The outlet purchased
$30 worth of ads targeting the mentioned categories to test the
feature. Facebook reportedly approved the three ads within 15
minutes.
(Related). What
Facebook had to say...
Updates to
our ad targeting
(Related).
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/facebooks-heading-toward-a-bruising-run-in-with-the-russia-probe
Facebook’s
Heading Toward a Bruising Run-In With the Russia Probe
We’ve seen a handful of very interesting
articles over the last few days about Russian efforts to spread
pro-Trump political propaganda on Facebook as part of their larger
2016 dis-information operation. As we noted
last week, the seemingly paltry sum of $100,000 may belie
the reach that was possible for that amount of money, given the
way that the Facebook ecosystem can be used to amplify messages
through a mix of highly targeted advertising and troll armies. The
Facebook campaign also seems to include the first
evidence of Russian operatives attempting to organize actual
political events on American soil, as opposed to just spreading
memes and fake news on the web.
… A separate article
by Yahoo’s Mike Isikoff reports that Trevor Potter, a former FEC
Chair and president of the Campaign Legal Center, wrote a letter to
Facebook and Chairman Mark Zuckerberg yesterday calling on Facebook
to release the information and upping the ante by writing this
(emphasis added):
“[B]y hosting these
secretly-sponsored Russian political ads, Facebook appears to have
been used as an accomplice in a foreign government’s effort
to undermine democratic self-governance in the United States.
Therefore, we ask you, as the head of a company that has used its
platform to promote democratic engagement, to be transparent about
how foreign actors used that same platform to undermine our
democracy.”
Facebook has said that it can’t release its
findings because that would violate its own ‘internal policies’
which protect user privacy. That’s rich.
Another problem with algorithm controlled
advertising?
Exclusive:
Google is cracking down on sketchy rehab ads
Overnight, the search giant
has stopped selling ads against a huge number of rehab-related search
terms, including “rehab near me,” “alcohol treatment,” and
thousands of others. Search ads on some of those keywords would
previously have netted Google hundreds of dollars per click.
“We found a number of
misleading experiences among rehabilitation treatment centers that
led to our decision, in consultation with experts, to restrict ads in
this category,” Google told The Verge in a statement.
… Google
is the biggest source of patients for most treatment centers.
Advertisers tell Google how much they want to spend on search ads
per month, which keywords they’d like those ads to run against, and
then pay Google every time someone clicks on their ad.
While many treatment centers
market themselves ethically, there are also significant numbers of
bad actors using deceptive and even illegal tactics to get “heads
in beds.” Last week, The
Verge published a story uncovering how marketers use the
internet to hook desperate addicts and their families, from hijacking
the Google business listings of other treatment centers to deceiving
addicts about where a treatment center is located.
… The exact keywords
affected by the change still seem to be in flux. Yesterday, for
instance, I noticed Googling “rehab near me” didn’t load any
AdWords, but “rehabs near me” did. An hour
after I reached out to Google’s spokespeople, “rehabs near me”
no longer showed ads. Fischer says the list of blocked keywords
continues to grow. [Suggests
manual correction of computer generated lists Bob]
Perspective. Hedging their bet?
Google in
talks to invest in Lyft
Google has held talks to invest around $1 billion
in Lyft, Axios has learned from multiple sources. Bloomberg is
reporting
the same. It is unclear which group within Google would make the
investment — the company has several investment arms and also
invests off its balance sheet — but word is that this is being
driven by top-level executives like Alphabet CEO Larry Page.
Why it matters: It would be a
stunning move, given that Google was an early investor in Lyft rival
Uber, even though the two companies have since gotten litigious over
allegations of trade secret theft. Or, as one Uber investor
explained it to Axios: "That is seriously messed up."
Perspective. “A TV in the hand is worth two in
the home?”
Pew – 6
in 10 young adults in U.S. primarily use online streaming to watch TV
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Sep 14, 2017
“The rise of online streaming services such as
Netflix and HBO Go has dramatically altered the media habits of
Americans, especially young adults. About six-in-ten of those ages
18 to 29 (61%) say the primary way they watch television now is with
streaming services on the internet, compared with 31% who say they
mostly watch via a cable or satellite subscription and 5% who mainly
watch with a digital antenna, according to a Pew
Research Center survey conducted in August. Other age groups are
less likely to use internet streaming services and are much more
likely to cite cable TV as the primary way they watch television.
Overall, 59% of U.S. adults say cable connections are their primary
means of watching TV, while 28% cite streaming services and 9% say
they use digital antennas. Among the other findings of the survey:
-
Women are more likely than men to say their primary way of watching TV is via cable subscription (63% vs. 55%).
-
Men are more likely than women to say their primary pathway is online streaming (31% vs. 25%).
-
Those with a college education or more are more likely than those with less education to say their primary way to watch TV is online streaming. Roughly a third of college-educated Americans (35%) say they mainly watch via streaming, compared with 22% of those who have a high school diploma or less.
-
Those in households earning less than $30,000 are more likely than others to say they rely on a digital antenna for TV viewing. Some 14% say this, compared with just 5% who live in households earning $75,000 or more…”
I get to do Spreadsheets next Quarter.
Even people who thought they knew every
trick in the book will occasionally stumble across a new feature
that they were previously unaware of. Here are three amazing Excel
2016 tricks you definitely (ok, probably) overlooked.
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